Reception Reader: Exploring Text Reuse in Early Modern British Publications

David Rosson, Eetu Mäkelä, Ville Vaara, Ananth Mahadevan, Yann Ciarán Ryan, Mikko Tolonen

Abstract: The Reception Reader is a web tool for studying text reuse in the Early English Books Online (EEBO-TCP) and Eighteenth Century Collections Online (ECCO) data. Users can: 1) explore a visual overview of the reception of a work, or its incoming connections, across time based on shared text segments, 2) interactively survey the details of connected documents, and 3) examine the context of reused text for "close reading". We show examples of how the tool streamlines research and exploration tasks, and discuss the utility and limitations of the user interface along with its current data sources.